The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Hormones and Menopause with Dr. Olinca Trejo, ND - Winter 2024

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

In this Guest Expert segment, Gina talks hormones and menopause with Dr. Olinca Trejo. Dr. Olinca is a licensed, board-certified Naturopathic Doctor in the province of Ontario. She also holds an honours degree in Kinesiology and has achieved her certification and internship in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT).You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2024Topics covered:Discussing hormones, perimenopause and menopause with Dr. OlincaDefining perimenopause and menopause and their effects on us physically, mentally and emotionallyStress, lack of sleep and deprivation diets play a role in the symptoms we experienceAs we enter our 30s and 40s, our bodies don’t have the same resiliency to tolerate stressors as they once didStress and sleep and their role in impacting our hormonal healthEarly signs and symptoms to recognize perimenopause and menopauseSigns that are often overlooked - mood changes, loss of libido, brain fog, joint pain, heart palpitations, etcHow The Livy Method supports this transitional time in lifeMenopause vs perimenopauseFat and its effects on hormone productionHormone testing and working with your health care providersTesting in your 20s-30s vs your 40s and how FSH fluctuatesThe importance of tracking your cycle, your sleep quality and other symptoms to support conversations with your health care professionalsThe protective effects of estrogen and when medications may or may not be appropriateThe Livy Method and how it supports so much more than weight loss when it comes to our overall healthChanges to our sleep architecture and insulin levels in perimenopauseEvery decision we make each day either supports or hinders our healthStress, diet, fitness and hormones are the pillars to focus on at this time of our livesThe importance of tracking/journalling your symptoms to assess treatment optionsTreatment options and the misconceptions around breast cancer, cardiovascular disease and HRTBioidentical hormones and the differences between oral medications, creams and patchesThe benefits of oral progesteroneTreatment is individualized and may need to be tweaked over time to find the appropriate combination for youOptions for women who are not HRT candidatesThe importance of exercise, sleep hygiene and diet in supporting this transitionary timeHow cycles can change when following The Livy MethodTalking to your medical professionals to get the care you deserveChanging the narrative around your hormones - hormones are your friend and respond to the environment you put them inThe importance of resistance training in maintaining muscle mass and the connection to our metabolic functionThe difference between weight loss and fat loss - why resistance training is a game changerEvery healthy habit and behaviour you have learned with The Livy Method is going to support this transitionary time in your lifeConnect with Dr. Olinca: [e-mail] learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals is here. Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle

with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. You're going to have this ability to now reframe. Allow yourself time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. The thoughts and the feelings and the behavior cycle can start changing. Dr. Alinka Trejo is back. We are going to have a very simple conversation about a very complex matter.

Hormones. We're talking hormones. We're going there today. Perimenopause we're talking hormones. We're going there today. Perimenopause, menopause, we're talking what is it? What's the testing that you can do? What are treatment options and how can you maximize and level up what you are doing here within the program and in this phase of your life? Let's go. Hello. Good morning. Hello. Good morning, everybody. All right, let's go. Let's get into it. What is perimenopause and menopause? Okay. Then we're just diving right in. Okay. So the first thing that I need you guys to understand

is that a woman is born with all of the eggs that she's going to release in her lifetime. Like shortly after conception, you get those and the ebb and flow through that four weeks of the menstrual cycle truly is centered around the release of an egg, right? And so your ovarian pool that you're born with is going to decline with age. And because, you know, we talked about this last time where like that perimenopause or the end of that toothpaste tube is, you know, a little bit of perimenopause in the sense that ovulation ends up being not as simple, not as frequent, your hormones start changing because you start running out of eggs that you can release, right? And so your hormones don't follow the same rhythm and pattern every four weeks that they did maybe in

your 20s and your in your 30s. And so perimenopause truly as a definition means the time around menopause and we used to reserve these conversations about menopause and perimenopause to women that didn't have cycles you know we would you'd go into your doctor and say like I think my hormones are changing they'd be like are you having a cycle yes then you can't be in perimenopause and now we're actually starting to understand that this haphazard production of hormones that happens as you're nearing that end of the toothpaste tube, and as your ovaries are running out of eggs, but they're not fully dead, it's this haphazard release and production of hormones that can last up to 10 years

before menopause that causes the changes in mood, the changes in sleep, the changes in memory and cognition and all of the things that you feel. And your hormones get very erratic at this time in your life. And that's actually why you feel very erratic, because there's times that you ovulate and everything feels great. And there's times that, you know, you ovulate and everything feels great. And there's times that you don't and your hormones are trying to release that one last or two last eggs. And so what happens is that most of us don't feel well, and we just can't really pinpoint what it is. Like, it's almost like you can't put your finger on it. You're like, honestly, sometimes like my sleep is

crap, and I have no idea why. And sometimes it's fine. But the challenge is that because these hormones, as we talked about before, are such a big part of that hormone orchestra, a lot of the things that happen in your physical, mental and emotional health, right, will be impacted by these erratic changes in your hormones. And really, truly, now we know that upwards of 20% of women at the age of 40, 40 years old, will start experiencing signs and symptoms of perimenopause. So instead of being this like, light switch that happens where you go from I had eggs to my ovaries are dead. It's a little bit more of this drawn out process that can happen for honestly, sometimes up to a decade. It seems really fucking flawed.

I know. Honestly, when I get up there, I have a ward with whoever's up there. I'd be like, listen, we got to chat about this because this isn't working. No, it truly is. I used to joke with my patients that if there was a reincarnation, I'd come back as a man because I was done with all this bullshit. Like it's, you know, and it's hormones are such a beautiful thing, but they respond to your environment. Right. And they're going to also respond to you aging and all of these things. And so the challenge, too, is that for a really long time, women were not part of studies and hormones were not something

that we were really interested in and so we let women suffer for far too long and we were almost gaslighted in medicine right because there was all of these things happening to our to our bodies and you know yourself better than anybody else you go and say like i don't feel one that'd be like here's an antidepressant or like do you you want the birth control pill? Like there weren't really very many options and very many conversations about, is this normal? Can I do something about it? Like, how do I improve the quality of my life? And like, I just feel like I'm falling apart. And people just saying like, well, that's just aging and part of being a woman. Well, and yes, but I also think that the symptoms and everything that we're dealing with are exasperated because of the fact that we're so stressed out and because of the diets we have

done the constant starving and depriving and having our body get into the state where it's just trying to get us to survive and i i don't think that's helping us i don't think that's helping us at all i think this is why by the time we start going through perimenopause many menopause we feel like broken down our bodies can't handle it because of all the shit we put our bodies through up until this point. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, a hundred percent. I, it's, you know, we, I go back to the simple concept of your hormones are an orchestra and everybody has to be beating or playing at the same at the same song, the same rhythm. And everybody has to be on the same key. Right.

And so the challenge is that, you know, you're like I said, your hormones are impacted by your environment. You know, if you are working 70 hours a week, guess what? Your hormones are going to respond to that. If you are sleep deprived, your hormones are going to respond to that. If you are sleep deprived, your hormones are going to respond to that. If you are super stressed out, and you are depriving yourself specifically of protein and carbohydrates, your hormones are going to respond to that. And in your 20s, and in your 30s, you may have a little bit more resiliency to that, right? Because, you know, you're, you're, you're 20, and you're 30, and your body's kind of like still in survival mode, and it's still kind of can compensate to an extent. But as you near like your 30s and your 40s and also your stress changes, right? The type of stress that you deal with changes and it becomes a little more

chronic in different ways. You don't have the same capacity because it's almost like your reserve is all gone. And you're coming from a deficit or a depleted, a lot of the times, a depleted state trying to balance something. And guess what? If there's no gas in your gas tank, you can't be on the 407 going 370 kilometers an hour, right? You have to put more gas in your gas tank. And so I do think that often what people fail to understand is that specifically when it comes to estrogen and progesterone, they in a way help you deal with stress because of the impact that they have on a lot of neurotransmitters. And so in perimenopause, often what we will see is also that you end up losing this resiliency to deal with stressors in your life because your hormones are completely out of whack. Right. And a lot of the times that also gets misdiagnosed or, you know, it just gets as like, well, you're really stressed out, you're not sleeping or whatever.

And so it's almost like this, this vicious cycle that you're in, because what you're doing is screwing up your hormones, but you're screwed up hormones. It's also impacting all of the other things that keep it at perseverating the cycle that you're in. Well, and I just want to remind people if they haven't had an opportunity to watch or listen to the previous conversation that we had, where we had that general conversation about hormones. And when you talk about the hormones being an orchestra, when we're talking about, you know, perimenopause, menopause, there's estrogen, progesterone, all of that. There's also how your cortisol levels, your insulin levels, your hunger hormones are impacted, which is why we're always talking about

stress and sleep. When it comes to weight loss, so many women are concerned about, so many people are concerned about hormones. My hormones are affecting my ability. I'm perimenopausal, I'm menopausal, postmenopausal, all of it. Will I be able to lose weight? And then they focus on what they're eating and when, eating less and exercising more and totally not giving their stress levels or their sleep any time and attention at all. And we may feel like a broken record when we're like, well, okay, great. You're I'm everyone's like, well, my weight's not moving. I'm, I'm eating and I'm, you know, exercising and you know, I'm drinking my water and doing all that. Well, what about your stress? What about your sleep? And I don't know

about you, but I'm, I'm fine. I'm fine. Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fucking fine. It's all fucking fine when it's not fucking fine and I'm fucking stressed out. And then because I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fucking fine. It's all fucking fine when it's not fucking fine. And I'm fucking stressed out. And then because I'm stressed out, I'm not sleeping. And then I'm blaming my hormones because my middle section is getting thick and I'm, you know, blaming my hormones on the fact that I'm like stressed out. Like I have anxiety and my heart's fluttering and I got all this shit going on when in reality in reality, it's how all of your hormones work together, which is why I love that we're having this conversation. And I love that the people listening are following the Libby method because you're already doing so many of the things.

Okay. Early signs and symptoms. Well, first of all, I have a question about those eggs. Now, women who go or people who go into perimenopause earlier than others, because you hear like 30, even 35, 40, does that mean they have less eggs? So they're born with left eggs. So their eggs run out sooner. Like what's happening there? How come that happens? Yeah. I mean, there are a number of different conditions that can cause that there's a surgical menopause, which, you know, can happen. Um, when, for example, you go through certain cancer treatments and it almost like zaps all of your eggs and they kind of they legitimately they do die. There are people that go through a condition that's called premature ovarian failure where we understand it is actually an autoimmune condition where it's almost like you're over your body instead of attacking your ovaries and your egg reserve as a result of it there's a number of conditions that cause it

but yeah there there are actually a number of women in my practice who end up going through menopause really early on like as early actually i've seen it as like 30 without being surgical menopause probably 32 or so and the challenge is that then we have to treat those women we have to age match them right we have to do the same uh like bone density scans and mammograms like the exact same things that we do to women in their 50s when they go through menopause in their 50s but in their 30s because the toll that not having those hormones actually can have for those 20 years of their life can really impact not just their health span, but their lifespan. I know. Yeah. Okay. All right. So how do you know?

How do you know? How do you know? Okay. So early signs and symptoms, everybody knows, you know, when your cycle starts changing is the very first thing that people focus on, you know, is my cycle still on time? Is it longer? Is it shorter? And by that, I mean, like the length, the time between day one to day one of the next cycle, right? We used to say that perimenopause was when your cycle start getting about seven days shorter, seven days longer than your normal. And there's usually a change in the quality or quantity of blood flow. Usually women experience heavier, more painful, these like gushing types of periods, but there's some women that actually just experience lighter periods that are less frequent. But the symptoms that

often people don't correlate to perimenopause or, you know, signs that your ovaries may not necessarily be in their 20s anymore, is that we start seeing sleep changes more than anything, where it's hard for you to fall asleep, it's hard for you to stay asleep, and it's really hard for you to sleep in, especially in that luteal phase, so the like really close to your cycle, we start seeing mood changes. And mood changes are really interesting because estrogen to an extent has a serotonin like impact in your brain and serotonin is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel really happy and balanced and gives you this general sense of well-being. And so we actually know that women going through perimenopause, especially if they've had depression in the past, they're way more likely to have an exacerbation of their symptoms or new onset depression and anxiety as well. Changes in libido is another one that's really, really common.

And we know that libido is so complex, right? It's about stress and it's so multifactorial. I always, I used to talk about libido as women having two different libido centers, almost that mental emotional one that you need to feel safe and cared for and loved and not stressed. And then the physiological one, right? Whereas like men are just have the physiological one. We have the two centers, but I'm talking about that sexual desire that typically happens around ovulation. When your body is like, get a baby in me. If you're not ovulating, usually that's also gone. And the most common one that I typically see is this brain fog and difficulty concentrating that happens.

That it's like you just feel like you're just walking through this fog and you're just like, I came to the fridge for, no, I came to the kitchen for, ah, shit. And then you like walk away. You're like, Oh God, I know this. I know the singer. I know the singer, but I just can't, she's blonde. It's that type of brain fog. When you start to wonder if you have Alzheimer's or dementia, you're like, am I going to be okay here? What is happening to me? Exactly. Yeah. And then the ones that people start experiencing, sometimes, you know, a little bit earlier on and sometimes a little bit later on, it's going to be obviously the hot flashes, the night sweats, because your estrogen starts fluctuating quite a lot. And that has an impact on your hypothalamus, which is the center that

regulates your temperature. You start experiencing joint pain, a lot of joint pain and inflammation. Heart discomfort is a really interesting one where women can start experiencing this like chest tightness or palpitations, or they feel like the heart is skipping a beat. And often actually it gets misdiagnosed because we start looking at cardiometabolic issues where it actually can just be the hormone fluctuations. And another one that is so important that women always forget about is the change in genitourinary symptoms. So that means where we start experiencing changes in the frequency or urgency of urination, especially at night. And we also start experiencing vaginal

dryness, pain with intercourse and sometimes bleeding, right? And out of all of the symptoms in menopause, almost all of them get better to an extent, except for that one. That is the one that continues getting worse over time if you don't do something about it. The brain fog, we have studies that say like, listen, eventually your body gets used to not having those hormones and you go back to your baseline. You know, eventually the hot flashes stop. For some people, it's, you know, decades before they do, but eventually they stop. Eventually your brain gets used to having less estrogen and your mood goes back to baseline. But the changes that happen to that vulva, to your vagina, they don't ever get better unless you do something about it. So if nothing else,

just remember, you need to take care of that one piece of the puzzle. Because if you start treating it, you know, in your 60s or your 70s, a lot of those changes are reversible and it's too late. Okay. There's stuff, there's things that we can do. Yeah. There's things that we can do. So many things that we can do. So many things that we can do. I mean, you know, and this is, this is not a conversation that's like, and we're all doomed. This is a conversation of, these are all of the things that are happening and your symptoms matter and your symptoms are valid and they're real. How can we change this? How can you have educated conversations with your physicians to be like, I don't feel well and like, what are my options, right?

This is how my body is changing. And so I want different tests than I had when I was in my thirties. So that again, it's the living method. It's not just about the weight loss. It's also about improving the quality of your life as you're aging in your hormones are inevitably before we do, so we talked about perimenopause and the symptoms and how you're going to feel and why you're feeling that. What about menopause? So it's that, okay, you no longer get your period anymore. And then what? How long are you in menopause as opposed to post-menopause? We know where it starts. Where does it end? And what's the conversation? I have so many people who are like, well, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm don't get my period anymore. I'm 70, I'm 75. What about me? Are the hormones that I need to think about? Like, so, so I get the perimenopause and then I

get your period stops and that's when you're in menopause, right? When you no longer get it anymore. And then what are you, then what? Then we die. I'm just joking. So perimenopause really is up until you reach menopause. And menopause in medicine is described as one year without having a menstrual period. And so if you had a menstrual period at the 11 months in 28 days, the clock starts again. That is so messed up. It is. I know I am telling you, we, we, we will, we will rise and we will talk to whoever's up there. And it's so we, so then you can, you kind of reach hopefully this stage where for some women, honestly, again, it's,

this is like the challenge with not having a lot of research right that for once you haven't had your cycle for that full year if we actually measure some women's hormones they still have a little bit of estrogen because your adrenals which are the glands that are sitting on top of your kidneys that respond to stress to an extent take over the production for estrogen progesterone and some of these steroid hormones which is actually why it's especially important at this time of your life to take care of your stress response, right? And like how you deal with stress because your adrenals are doing double the work that they did in your 20s and your 30s. And so, and also another, I guess like gland or tissue that takes over for the estrogen

production is actually going to be fat. Because fat, especially the fat that is deposited centrally or abdominally, will start producing estrogen, sometimes not good estrogen. And sometimes we'll take over that production, which is actually why it perseverates the cycle that sometimes we're in where, you know, the fat produces estrogen, estrogen produces more fat. And so this is actually where the conversation of weight loss becoming so important for estrogen dominant conditions that we don't want later on in life, like uterine cancer, breast cancer, things like that, actually becomes really, really important, right? Because a lot of women get really worried about HRT increasing the risk of breast cancer. Guess what? Obesity increases your risk of breast cancer way more than HRT does. Wow. So yes, it's hard to lose weight

when you're dealing with your hormones, but it's so important to really focus and balance them, which will help you lose weight. And it's so important to lose weight because, okay, wow. All right. Well, good thing we're all here. We're getting into it. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting into the 90 degree. Yeah. So, and then you had asked me to think about testing. Yeah. So, so, okay. So, you know, I think this is so many women's experience. Um, I went to my

doctor, right. And as you know, I'm going to come see you and my doctor's amazing. And she's like, okay, tell me how you're feeling. And then she's like, okay, let's get some blood work first and rule out, I don't know, B12 deficiency, iron deficiencies, this deficiency, that deficiency, the stress in your life. And I'm like, well, what about my fucking hormones? And she's like, well, there's other tests we have to do to, before we even go there. And so that can be really frustrating for people. I totally understand. And I love that my doctor's approach is let's rule out the basics, right? Let's see where you're at. And so I think so, so many people have the experience also, well, you, you still have your period. So, and you're probably what's your life like, oh, you're stressed. have your period. So, and you're probably, what's your life like? Oh,

you're stressed. So here's an anti-anxiety pill for you. What about, can we just Suzanne Summers this shit? Can't we just like rub creams on our body and do the bioidentical? And then, you know, I'm really great at researching. I like, I, but it's very difficult to kind of like make sense of what's happening with hormones. And you go down this rabbit hole and you just end up even more confused. And then you're just like, well, fuck, I guess I don't even know. But then you hear some women who are like, I'm on this therapy and oh my God, it's life changing. I feel amazing. I'm rubbing cream on my vagina and it's, you know, made all the difference in the world and you should too. And then we're like, well, where do

you get the vagina cream? How do you get the vagina cream? How do you get it? We're the vagina gods. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. How do you get it? And so, yeah, because some doctors don't deal in that and some doctors don't deal in this.

And so, yeah, where do we, where do we start? Where do we begin? Okay. So let's talk about testing for hormones and then we're going to talk about testing for all of the other things that I guess hormones have an impact on that you should also be taking care of. I think what's happening, I just want to stop here. I think what's happening is it's a very complicated conversation and we need it to be simple.

And I think maybe doctors, some doctors aren't really great at articulating the, like, you know, our mind is blown by how, how you know your cortisol and your insulin and your hormones and all that are factoring into you know your estrogen and progesterone like we're thinking we're having a small conversation it's so simple to fix and meanwhile it's like it's such a big conversation right so anyway okay all right let's go okay so let's let's just talk about sex hormones first. I do think there's so many little pieces to the puzzle that we need to understand and we need to understand how to navigate our system because, um, I mean, if you're in Canada and you're listening to this in Canada, having a universal healthcare system is amazing, but there's all

drawbacks to that, right? Because we are, um, we have to take care of everybody and we don't sometimes have like the resources to take care of everybody. So testing for hormones when you are cycling and you are in your 20s and your 30s, blood work is amazing because day three to day five of your cycle where your ovaries are getting a signal from your brain to say, like, release an egg, little one. There's a hormone that's called FSH or follicle stimulating hormone that kind of guides us to understand like how much, how many eggs do I have left? Because if your brain is releasing a lot of the stimulating hormone, it means that there's not as many eggs, right? It's almost like yelling at your ovary being like, hello, hello. And so when it, you're in your twenties and your thirties, we actually expect this hormone

to be really, really low because you have a ton of eggs. As you kind of get closer to, you know, the again, that ovarian pool being a little bit more depleted, that hormone is going to start increasing. Right. Because, again, your ovaries are not responding to just small whispers of this hormone. They need to be yelled at a little bit more. And so the challenge with the testing is that it has to specifically be done on day three to five of your cycle. Otherwise, it means absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then when you get into your 40s, and in that change of perimenopause, testing becomes a little bit hard. Because again, we go back to the, there's times that you ovulate,

there's times that you don't, there's times that you produce a back to the, there's times that you ovulate, there's times that you don't, there's times that you produce a ton of estrogen, there's times that you don't. And so if I test a 45 year old woman on day three, there's a set of blood work that's going to come back. And I'm like, Oh my God, girlfriend, like you can make babies until you're 70. Look at this FSH. And I might actually catch her two cycles from now where she's not ovulating. Yeah, that's rough. I'd give you like five years till menopause, right? Because again, that release of the eggs doesn't become, becomes a little bit more erratic and it's not as smooth as it was. And so this is where in perimenopause, and if you know things are changing, tracking becomes

so important and it becomes so important for that chat with your physician, and if you know things are changing, tracking becomes so important. And it becomes so important for that chat with your physician, because if you start noticing like, listen, my cycle is starting to change like this. This is where I start noticing that my mood is starting to change. This is where I start noticing that my sleep is starting to change. And you actually start tracking, even if it's with an app, right? That you're like, honestly, there's times that like a round ovulation, this happens. and there's times that it doesn't. So that probably means that when I start getting all of these symptoms,

it might be because I didn't ovulate. When I had those symptoms, I felt like I was in my twenties, which probably means that I ovulated. And that becomes a different conversation with your doctor because the doctor is like, oh, okay, I see what's happening. Cause there's not, and this is the challenge.

Honestly, this is the hardest thing, even as a physician in perimenopause is that it looks like everything. And it looks like nothing just because again, your hormones are doing this, right? Once you start getting closer to menopause and you know that, okay, things for sure are becoming a little bit erratic. The blood work becomes a little bit more effective at reading like how much we have, because you for sure you're at the very, very, very last end of that toothpaste tube. And so that FSH typically starts getting more consistently elevated regardless as to when you test it. But the rest of the hormones can look a little bit wonky because your estrogen, again, can go really, really high and it go really, really low and really high and really low. And so the only thing

really that matters through this transition, more than anything is going to be your FSH because it's going to give you the clearest picture. There are other tests like urine test and saliva tests that are available in Canada. They can be very cost prohibitive because they're not cheap. They're in, you know, the 400, 500, 600 dollar range and they can be great. But if I bring you back to the fact that your hormones can look like sometimes you're great and sometimes you're not. If you do this $600 test on a cycle that you ovulated, your practitioner is going to look at it and be like, you don't need hormones. You're totally fine. And you're going to look at this and be like, I paid $600 for you to tell me that I'm totally fine. And you don't feel fine. And you don't feel fine. Right. And so this is

actually where working with somebody that truly understands your clinical history and goes through every single detail can sometimes be more powerful than blood work to just diagnose that change in perimenopause, right? Menopause, you know, like, you know, I didn't have a cycle. We ran some hormones. There's no more eggs. Like we know, we know where that's at. But, but that, that truly, that is just a conversation of steroid hormones. Now, when it comes to then insulin and cortisol and a lot of the other things that happen as a result of perimenopause. Right. Because we know that because we were chatting about the symptoms that the early signs and symptoms that to look for, I guess.

But there are other things that your estrogen, to an extent, is protecting you from when you have a steady release of estrogen. One of them is actually it protects your cardiovascular system. Right. And we know actually that women who have estrogen have about half of the cardiovascular disease risk as men. And when we reach menopause and we have completely run out of estrogen, we actually age match them. And now we have the same risk for cardiovascular disease as men. And in that transition, one of the first things that I start seeing is that your cholesterol will start increasing, your total cholesterol will start increasing, your bad cholesterol, which is the LDL or the low density lipoprotein will start increasing as well as your triglycerides. And you're going to get this nosedive in your healthy cholesterol, which is the high density

lipoprotein. Your blood pressure might start increasing because we become more salt sensitive. And so what happens is that around that time, like your doctor, they're going to be like, okay, let's test your cholesterol. There's so many other things that we need to test for that are not hormone related, but they are hormone related. And instead of saying like, oh, you know, this doesn't make sense. Like you don't, you haven't changed your diet. You haven't changed your exercise. You don't have a clinical history of familial, family heart disease or cholesterol issues, familial hypercholesterolemia, and your cholesterol is starting to change, instead of taking a look at like, oh, I wonder if this is because your hormones are starting to

change. The first thing that we often do, they're like, oh, statin, obviously this isn't working with your diet and your exercise. We need to medicate you. And that's not it, right? It is, this is happening because your hormones are changing. So let's try to, to an extent if we can, if you're a candidate for HRT, or like look at your options rather than just slap on a medication that you probably don't need. Because if you are in the living program,

if you are doing, you know, if you, whatever it is that you're doing and you're trying to get healthy, there's probably a way that we can mitigate some of these changes that will happen for a few years, because again, your body will get used to that without you having to be on another medication. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise.

It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. I have such mad love and respect for our program right now because it's just, this is so,

it's so much more important than weight loss. And I love that we're here to lose weight, but I'm just, you know, I'm thinking about conversations that I've had with people who gone through the program, lost a ton of weight, and then they go to their doctor and they're like, my cholesterol levels up, what's happening? And maybe I've eaten too much good fat or too many eggs or too many of that. And you're like, okay, well maybe it's just your hormones, you know, or people who've gone and lost weight through the program and feel amazing. And then all of a sudden they have a hard time managing their weight and what's happening. I know what I need to do. I'm doing back on track. It's not working for me. Your hormones are being affected.

Like, it's just, this is like, wow. Wow. And you know what? It's the same thing. We've had this conversation about sleep, but these hormones have such a profound impact on the quality of your sleep, right? The architecture of your sleep. And often, I mean, in this transition of perimenopause, even your increase of obstructive sleep apnea without changing your weight, just by changing your hormones will increase by about threefold as a female. And then it goes undiagnosed because women attribute their fatigue or, you know, their symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea to menopause. Or for example, you know, the, the changes that happen to their insulin. Estrogen is your friend. Estrogen makes you insulin sensitive.

When you start getting these haphazard fluctuations, so when you don't necessarily have that protective mechanism from estrogen because you've gone through menopause, you lose that protective mechanism, right? So we often see this little shift in your insulin, your fasting blood glucose, and your hemoglobin A1C. And what I often see is my patients get really frustrated because they're like,

I didn't change anything. There's nothing else that I could be doing. And this is where the conversation of like, it's your hormones and you're not crazy. And there's nothing that you're doing right or wrong. There's things that we can do, but this is like, we just need to ride the wave a little bit and understand what's happening so that you don't end up on more medication, more supplements, more, more, more, more, more things that you don't need. We just need to optimize what you're already doing and level up what you're already doing when you understand what's happening to your body, right? So that it becomes also this, because I think that the reality is that in this stage of life, a lot of women don't feel well. And when you don't feel well, it's so much

easier, Gina, to just like throw in the towel and just be like, you know what, F it. Like, I'm tired. I am moody. Like, I don't want to exercise. Like, I don't want to do all these things. And we know for a fact that women going through the menopausal transition walk less. We walk about 3,000 steps less because we don't feel well. We feel tired. We're not sleeping. We feel cranky. We feel dry.

We feel all of these things. And this is actually why I love having these conversations with people because I always say, like, every decision that you make every single day is helping you towards your goal. And to an extent, honestly, every decision that you make is going to help your experience of menopause or harm your experience of menopause. Right. So I think that's actually why I love your program as much as I do. I think that if I was to summarize it in like a sentence, I always tell my patients, it's like the Mediterranean diet with mindful eating had a baby with like a lot of the behavioral changes, right? And that's, we have research that says in this transition of life, truly the thing that you want to focus on is a Mediterranean diet. We know in women, it actually delays menopause by about one to two years if you eat a Mediterranean diet.

Yeah. And before y'all just quit the living method and run out and do the Mediterranean diet, you're doing it, right? Lots of healthy omega. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a diet because there is that Mediterranean diet. It's a way of eating. So can you just talk about that?

What's important? Your nuts, your seeds, your healthy fats, your healthy carbohydrates. All of that is what we're talking about. Everything that you're doing with following the food plan here on the Living Diet. What you're doing is the Mediterranean lifestyle. You're right. I should take diet out of my vocabulary, but it's a Mediterranean lifestyle. And what you try to promote, which is like, you

know, with the fruits and the vegetables and the nuts and the protein, all of the things that you're trying to teach people is a Mediterranean lifestyle. Truly. It's simplified. So here's where I wrote down. I wrote down stress, right? I wrote down your diet. I wrote down your fitness, walking. I know you're going to talk about the importance of maintaining muscle mass, which is so huge. We're going to talk about that. I do want to talk about treatments. We're going to talk about that next. So stress, diet, fitness, hormones, those are the things really that people need to focus on. So before we talk more extensively about the things that people can be proactive in doing, and I want to just revisit what you said about working with a healthcare practitioner who knows your history. I mean,

a lot of people feel like even though they have an amazing family doctor, they don't spend enough time with their doctor having these conversations. So I just want to point out that people can be proactive. This is what journaling is all about. Your journaling isn't just tracking what foods you're eating and your weight. It's your mood. It's how your body is responding. It's how you are feeling. It's also tracking your cycle, which we're going to put a period tracker in the app. It's already on the list, you know, so you can do a lot of this yourself. When did it start?

How are you feeling? Like, especially with ovulation, I used to be able to know exactly the day I'm ovulating right side, left side side when it's switching i know i feel like i'm in the constant state of i'm like am i ovulating or the next week i'm like am i ovulating now and then next am i ovulating now i'm always fucking ovulating and so you know you could probably go back and start tracking when you started to feel off also align with what was happening in your life. But there's a lot that you can do to be proactive. So you take this information to your doctor or if you get a new doctor or whatever with that. Okay. Let's talk treatment options. Let's talk about the creams and the pills and the, should we start with HRT? Because people just think you're going to get

cancer and die. It's your only option and you're going to get cancer and die. And so you, like most women are like, I don't want to do that. I know. Well, you're neither is going to happen. You know, it's so, it's so hard because I think that in every area of medicine, we've evolved treatments and solutions to meet the needs of our patients and our modern patients. Yet in menopause or clinical practice hasn't really followed the research. Like we're stuck talking about research. That's like 20, 30 years old. And I,

you know, I want women to understand that HRT isn't a new thing. HRT was actually first available in the forties and it really took off in the sixties. And like everybody was getting the creams and the pills and like all these things. And everybody was like, these are amazing. And then there was a study that came out that was called the Women's Health Initiative or the WHI. And legitimately, we've tried to undo the damage

that that study did, because it was completely blown out of proportion. And now that we've gone back to read the research and that study actually continued after like we blew all of these things out of proportion and took women on HRT for like for almost two decades after we started talking about the bad things about HRT but nobody actually listened to the results of like the the long uh WHI study which is actually what it's called and so what happened in the study is that they actually took North American women and there was two different groups that we were looking at. And we were looking at women in their mid-60s or older who either were starting HRT or who had been on HRT.

They were often overweight and totally unrepresentative of like the general population, right? And so then what happened was that what we realized looking back on the results, because there was a huge, there was a lot of media attention that said like HRT causes breast cancer and HRT causes cardiovascular disease. Right. And the reason why that happened when we look and I'm going to try to simplify it because it's actually a very complex conversation. But there were there were different groups. Right. That we because in research, we we do controlled groups. We do like the treatment groups and we almost do like the placebo groups in the group actually that only had estrogen we saw a reduction in

breast cancer and a reduction in mortality of breast cancer the the people that had uh estrogen uh with progesterone and it was a really old school type of estrogen and progesterone um compared to women who had been on HRT before when they were young, because again, we're looking at women in their 60s, 70s and 80s that are like, getting HRT for the first time, right? So these older women who have been through menopause, maybe 1020 years before they give HRT, they have a slightly increased risk of breast cancer compared to women in their group who had had HRT before when it was adequate, when it was like right after menopause. The increase in breast

cancer was one case for every thousand. However, when you compare those women to women that never received HRT, so just the baseline women that like just went through menopause without getting anything at all, there was actually no difference in the risk of breast cancer at all. And when they've actually looked at the data again, they've looked at like, listen, even if it did increase the risk of breast cancer, it led to earlier diagnosis, but the mortality rate, which means like the number of deaths in women that were receiving HRT was no different in women who were treated versus not treated. And so the biggest fallacy that we believed in the WHI is that estrogen equaled breast cancer. And what I'm here to tell you is that no, no, estrogen may actually be protective

against breast cancer. And there's a link between a hormones that we don't use anymore because those are actually the ones that we were like, oh, crap. Like maybe maybe these are the ones that can cause breast cancer. But also that there's a time and a place for HRT. You know, nobody on this earth that that knows about HRT is going to tell you that HRT doesn't help improve the quality of life in women. We all agree on that. It's just weighing the risks. And there are real risks. There's people that are not candidates for it.

But breast cancer for the general population, not if you have a first degree relative or you have had breast cancer. There's so many things that obviously are individualizedized but for the general population that that conversation needs to end we have disproven that time and time and time and again and and people are still holding on to like really old research for some reason and then with the cardiovascular disease uh piece there there's been actually a number of meta-analysis which is like the highest degree of evidence in medicine in a really important study that was published in 2012 in Denmark that actually showed that women who use combined HRT so both estrogen and progesterone for 10 years immediately after menopause actually had a reduced risk of disease and all cause mortality

um uh for i think like 10 years after using hrt and so it's it's protective it can be protective again like for breast and it also can be protective for cardiovascular disease and the the the one piece that people are always like oh but it can cause. Listen, the oral contraceptive has a higher risk of causing stroke than the, uh, the HRT. And, um, that risk is only really with oral estrogen, which is actually why we love slapping the creams and the patches and not necessarily the oral. Yeah. That's one of the things, that's one of the things I am doing my research. And I know that the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because I follow, and I don't know if this is where social media is good or bad, but it's amazing in the sense that we have access to some amazing experts who are actually trying to help people rather

than clickbait and likes and whatever. And I follow a few of them. And whenever they talk about HRT, the comment section goes bananas with, well, you're going to die. And God forbid you eat soy while you're doing HRT. It's a death sentence, you know, that whole, all of that. And so one of the things that I did learn is like, there's sort of good estrogen replacement and there's not so great. And this is where maybe the creams have been proven to be a little bit better than the pills that people are taking.

So is that, what's the difference? Like, is that the, like, what's the, is that, what are the bioidenticals and the creams versus the pills? What's, what's the difference there? Yeah. So I, you know, bioidentical is probably a term. I think I started hearing it a lot more with Suzanne Somers when she was popping all those creams. Yeah. That's's what it really took off and the premise and when people talk about

bioidentical hormones they talk about how they're just a little bit more like your own types of estrogen and progesterone um i mean all of them are synthetic like that like they make no mistake all of them are synthetic they're made by somebody um but i i i do prefer bioidentical hormones that are fda approved because bioidentical hormones can be either compounded by a pharmacist or you can actually get them from your pharmacy and there is a lot of pharmaceutical companies that actually make the same types of estrogen and progesterone that susan summers made so famous that was compounded by a pharmacist. They, you know, Pfizer and these other companies make it. And the reason why we like them is because often what we see is that we see a

greater clinical impact or an improvement in symptoms at lower doses. And there's a decreased risk of some of the side effects that we got really scared about, right? Like stroke or increased cardiovascular disease or cholesterol issues or like things like that, that can actually can happen with some forms, but not all of them. I love transdermal estrogen. So that would be a patch or a cream because when it doesn't get metabolized by your liver, it doesn't have the same impact or the same negative impact on your coagulation pathways that can predispose you to a clot and then a stroke, right? The only tricky thing is the progesterone. So progesterone, for people that love slapping creams on them, progesterone is important when you have a uterus

more than anything to protect your endometrial lining from thickening. Because the real risk of estrogen therapy, if you have a uterus, is that it's going to thicken that lining too much, change the cells in that lining, which is called endometrial hyperplasia, and predispose you to endometrial cancer, right? Now, like, bear in mind that we see a lot of symptoms before that happens, and we're tracking your lining with the use of transvaginal ultrasounds. We just don't give you a hormone and we're like, see ya, call me in 10 years. There's a lot of things that have to happen and a lot of things that we want to do along the way. But the truth is that the research shows the only type of progesterone that fully protects that lining is oral progesterone. And so

I love creams and I love patches, but progesterone has to be oral because that's what the guidelines recommend. Progesterone can be used as a cream and also as a vaginal suppository, but for the endometrial protection, it has to be oral. Now, the benefit of oral progesterone is that as it gets metabolized by your liver, there's a little metabolite halfway through the breakdown that makes you really sleepy and tired and it really helps with sleep. Okay. Wow. It gives people this like deep, nice, like restful sleep that they often got in their 20s and their 30s when they were ovulating, but they stopped getting through perimenopause and definitely menopause. Sign me up. Sign me up. Okay. One of the other things I've learned is like, it's not

just like you said, here you go and you're good for 10 years. Like it's not, it's not like an overnight quick fix. And sometimes you have to find the right combination as well. So not, it's not like every woman is being prescribed the same thing because you really have to figure out what works for you. And that can take time. For sure. And especially, you know, in perimenopause, sometimes it can feel like your practitioner doesn't know what they're doing but your hormones are changing all the time and your doses might change honestly three four or five times before you actually reach menopause and we don't want you to have the hormone levels of somebody who is 13 years old we just want you to not have an estrogen of minus 45 right there, if we measure it on blood work, often your estrogen

is so low that it's undetectable. We just want it to be able to get to the level where it's just over. And from the data that we've extrapolated from, again, women who have gone through menopause really, really early on that we've tracked and we've seen like, okay, what level of estrogen do I need in order to protect your bones, which is actually part of the reason as to why we love HRT so much, right? It gives you 10 more years of your bones because there's such a rapid decline in your bone mass through that menopausal transition. And so we kind of extrapolated a lot of the data that we have from studying those women to figure out around what level we should keep you at we don't do blood work very often sometimes we might do it once or twice sometimes

we don't we more manage symptoms but if you truly are interested in like okay but i want to know that it's helping with like my bones and my endometrial lining and what have you you can work with your practitioner because there there are some studies that can help us guide that but there you know, there's blood work, there's transvaginal ultrasounds, there's bone density scans, there's so many other ways in which we can track your improvements in, again, that health span beyond just the hot flashes and night sweats being gone. Okay. Anything else we're missing about treatment options that you want to cover?

Yeah. So obviously there, you know, for women who are not candidates for HRT, because, you know, if I take it back to menopause, this for HRT truly, it's the gold standard for vasomotor symptoms, which is hot flashes, night sweats. We now use it also for depression and anxiety and perimenopause and menopause, which is really interesting. It can be used actually for the prevention of osteoporosis, but it's not used as a treatment. And so there's reasons, right? The conversation is obviously, yes, it is for your symptoms, but look at all of the other things that it can do. It can protect your bones. It can protect your brain. It can protect like all of these other things that depend on estrogen. But there are

women who a feel like maybe, you know what, my vasomotor symptoms, my hot flashes are really not that bad. Do I need to go on it? That's actually something that you need to decide with your doctor, because again, it can be protective for those 10 years, but it may not, you may not necessarily be a candidate there. If your primary symptom is hot flashes and you are not a candidate for HRT, there are other medications available and there are natural supplements, right? There are other things that you can do. For example, sage, sage is a great one for hot flashes. We have evidence that 400 to 600 milligrams of sage or dried herb equivalent of sage can reduce hot flashes and sleep disturbances and night sweats by about 40 to 50 percent in as little as four weeks. Soy, I know. Soy, which gets such a bad rep. But soy, and we're talking about like organic non GMO soy, you know, the soy that Gina and I like. The addition of 15 grams of soy protein per day has been shown to

reduce hot flashes by about 21% in as little as six weeks. There are other things like Chinese rhubarb that can do the same and they're, and that's for hot flashes, right? If now we're talking about more of like the mood piece, which is like the depression and the anxiety, which I think is such a huge component in this wellness conversation, right? Because when you don't feel well, when you're not sleeping well, it's hard. It's hard to change, right? Your lifestyle is hard to, it's hard to make decisions sometimes that are going to, um, help your long-term goals because the Cheetos just look a little bit better because that's the hit of

dopamine that you feel like you need at that time. Right. Um, and so there's, there, there are other supplements like, you know, Sam E, St. John's wort, saffron, light therapy that, uh, have, um, that have been shown to, to, uh, really improve the symptoms of, uh symptoms of depression during perimenopause. But honestly, the two things that actually help, regardless as to whether you're on HRT or natural supplements, or regardless as to what route you decide to take, is exercise, sleep hygiene, and diet. I was waiting for you to say some magical supplement. I had my pen ready.

I was going to write it out. You know, and there are some for some people that, you know, help mitigate those symptoms. But like, you know, I don't fool anybody about this. Sage might help you with the hot flashes, but it's not going to protect your bones. It's not going to protect your bones. It's not going to protect your heart. It's not going to decrease or reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Like, it doesn't fix your dry, itchy, painful vagina. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't.

So this is where I think that having an educated conversation with your practitioner is so important in figuring out, like, is it too late for me? You know, if I'm 10 years old, is that too late for me? Honestly, for some, it isn't. For some women, it is, but for some women, it isn't. So this is actually why it's such an individualized conversation. And I love that we're having it and educating women because it can feel like this black hole in medicine with your practitioner because honestly for like my mom's i remember my mom was going through premenopause and menopause her physician was like oh i don't believe in hrt yeah and i was like

that's like like what like what do you mean you don't believe in hrt that's like being like i don't i don't believe in chemo i just don Yeah. And so you can believe whatever you want, but the research is clear, right? This like HRT improves the quality of our lives. And you can also improve the quality of your life with other supplements and sleep hygiene or whatever. But the truth is how many patients do I have that are in your program that are like, I lost weight. And honestly, I have no hormone issues. I start eating like this and like, I, my hemoglobin A1C dropped. I'm cycling back to like every 28 days. Like the changes that you make again, every single day are going to change your experience through this transition for the better, for the worse. I promise you that. Well, it's really interesting because we have that whole post right on your menstrual cycle

and how we have to let people know that it's not unusual for your cycle to start coming back after it's gone for years because of the work that you were doing. Now, of course, with that said, if you ever feel like something is off, cause that can be a sign that something else is going on, check in with your doctor, but it's not unusual after you start, you know, managing your stress and moving your body more and getting your diet on point. And that's what I love. I love that you're bringing awareness to the conversation, to the signs, to the symptoms, to the testing, what you can do, conversations you can have with your doctor. But more so than that, I just want to double down on

the fact that when you are managing your stress and you are moving your body, especially doing that resistance training, Yes, your heart health is important with your cardio, but you're not trying to burn the fat off you. What's going to help you really with that fat is that is maintaining that or building that muscle mass, you know, maybe doing some stretching, some yoga, calming that mind, focusing on your sleep hygiene, you know, obviously your, your diet is really important, but you're on point. If you're eight weeks in with the living method, you got that down, you know, so that's really where, and this is maybe where doctors are like, okay, like a pill is fine. A cream is fine. But if your stress is through the

roof, you're not moving your body. You're eating like shit. Like there might not be a whole lot of help for you and just taking a pill at the end of the day either, you know? So, so, okay. Um, talking to your doctor, make sure you get the care you deserve. either, you know, so, so, okay. Um, talking to your doctor, make sure you get the care you deserve. So just quickly before we go, people are going to walk away. They feel like they are, they have the information and now they're going to be like a book. I'm calling my doctor today. And how do you have that conversation? Yeah. So I, I mean, yeah so i i mean i i think that um for the last maybe five years or so the conversation around perimenopause and menopause is changing um you know i and so give your doctor a chance i always tell my patients that like give your doctor a chance sometimes you go in assuming that they're

going to be like a hard no on it because of past experiences that you've had this is where I feel like the tracking um a lot of the time is actually very very helpful and having an educated conversation with them right and um there are you know at some point I I can give you some resources uh if you like that that can truly honestly dissect a lot of the things that I'm trying to oversimplify so that you can have that risk benefit conversation with your doctor you can understand honestly whether or not you might be a good candidate for this or not or you know you may you may even just try to focus on uh the other things like for example if you're like listen I am like not sleeping at all and I'm not having hot flashes and I don't want to sleep because this is not the issue. Like, can we try progesterone? Can we try this?

I do the one thing that I, and I'm so glad that you brought up the exercise because I think that more than anything, the one thing that I want people to walk away from, from this conversation with is that hormones are not like hormones are your friend. And there's this, there's this like narrative in social media that I see a lot of the time that's like, you're, you know, your hormones are working against you. And like, you have to detox your hormones and you have to do these things, but your hormones are your friend and they respond to the environments that you put them in. And so for me, I just, I always go back to the, the basics and you know that I'm like a basics kind of girl. I think that even when it comes to, to weight gain, like you going through perimenopause and menopause is not a sentence

for weight gain. It truly isn't. Hormones don't make you, I mean, estrogen, because, you know, insulin and cortisol are different, but like estrogen doesn't make you gain weight per se. It directs more where the weight is going to go, right? Because when you lose that direction of estrogen, that like, that tells you like, oh, the fat should go in that, you know, the gluteal femoral area, it starts depositing abdominally. Exactly. And this is actually where, you know, perimenopausal women will sit across from both you and I'd be like, I never had this. And it's yes, because you've lost that protective mechanism from estrogen, right? But the thing is, is that it's, it doesn't, the weight gain also comes from all of the other

things that you're doing or you're not doing. It's coming from the insulin. It's coming from the stress. It's coming from the lack of sleep. It's coming from the insulin. It's coming from the stress. It's coming from the lack of sleep. It's coming from the fact that diet culture always told you to eat less and exercise more. And that's increasing your cortisol. And that is burning through your muscle because I can't stress that enough. And I feel like I always plug this in every podcast that I do with you,

but it truly like the most valuable thing in your body for the rest of your life and that will dictate the wrong way, because we're children of the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s that said like cardio is the way that you lose weight. What actually happens is that you eat away all of your muscle mass. Yeah. And your muscle mass is what gives you that metabolic rate and what helps you burn calories at rest, right? So this is actually why metabolically you adapt to decreasing those calories and why all of the starving diets and the yo-yo dieting that you did in the past worked until it didn't. And then you started eating normally and then your body was like, oh my God, because you literally decrease your metabolic rate so much by giving up your muscle mass in order to fit into the size two pants that you wanted to. This isn't about that. This is about how do I increase my health span and how

do I change the conversation about not just weight loss, but improving my body composition as I age. Because while I understand that everybody wants to lose the five or the 10 pounds or whatever it is that your goal is here, we should keep that in mind while also exercising in the right way for where you're at with your hormones to make sure that you're not only not giving up that muscle mass and unlearning all of the crap that you learned through the last 30 years of diet culture, but also building that muscle mass so that you can run after your grandchildren and pick up your own groceries and honestly be able to eat what you want to eat in that piece of cake or whatever without any guilt, because guess what? Your metabolism is fast

because you have muscle mass. And so it's learning how to maximize a level up what you're learning in this program while also understanding where you're at in your face of life, right? Because you're not 20, you're not 30, like your muscle mass is different in your 50s and your 60s. And around menopause, there's this really rapid decline. So I hate weightlifting. We've had this conversation before. I hate resistance training. I would love to do Pilates every day, but I can't because that's not what builds muscle mass. So it's having these conversations and understanding how to level up your health and all of the things that you've learned in this program to have the best quality of life that you can for as long as you are on this earth. Drop the mic, drop the mic, drop the mic. There's a big difference between weight loss

and fat loss. And we don't talk about that enough on the program. We're going for fat loss, not just weight loss, drop in muscle mass. If you are listening to this conversation or joining us live, and you are concerned about your hormones affecting your ability to lose weight, or that's why you're having a hard time losing weight, or that's why you feel like you gain weight and you are not doing resistance training, and you're just on that, you know, elliptical or going for that run or just doing those walks every day, that is part of your problem, whether you want to hear it or not. Making sure you're getting those steps in, making sure you're doing that resistance training, that can be a game changer.

Hormones are your friend and respond to the environment that you put them in. Holy fucking shit balls. I love this conversation today. And every healthy habit and behavior that you engage in and that you've learned in this program is going to help your experience of this transition. I promise you. Dr. Alinka Trejo, honestly, thank you. So grateful for you taking the time for you to really understanding how we need to have this conversation, not just showing up and trying to show us that what you know, actually breaking it down in a

way that we can understand, wrap our heads around and feel empowered by. Thank you to everyone who's taking the time to join us live today. You know, I've been watching the comments and the questions and I know this, I know this conversation has resonated. Thank you, Dr. Alinka. Fascinating conversation. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a game changer. Thank you so much. I'm already, I know you'll be back. So I'm already looking forward to our next conversation. I'm sure there are more rabbit holes that we can go down and I'm looking forward to it. Dr. Alinka Trejo, where can people find you? Cause I know they're going to ask. Yeah. I, you know what we, I, the easiest way to find me is through email info at dr.linka.com. Okay. Amazing. Thanks everyone. Have an amazing day and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. new year new me season is here and honestly we're already over it enter felix the health

care company helping canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year weight loss is more than just diet and exercise it can be about tackling genetics hormones metabolism felix gets it they connect you you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A.